“Get her to the fire.” Sorgrad pushed past me, digging Zenela’s limp body free of the clinging soil. The reluctant earth released her with a sucking noise of disappointment and muddy water oozed from her mouth and nose. We carried her to the fire and laid her gently down. I wondered if we should be laying her out.
“Usara!” yelled Frue, cradling Zenela’s unresponsive head in his arms.
“Where did you find her?” Usara knelt and put one ear to her mouth, light fingers on her neck to measure the beat of her blood. He grimaced and briskly ripped open her bodice, one impersonal hand on her breast above her heart. “Lay her flat.”
Using his other hand to tilt Zenela’s head back, Usara closed his eyes in concentration. Her skin was still stark white in the firelight. Usara lifted his hand and her chest rose slowly, following the wizard’s movement. Her bluish lips parted, a faint radiance showing air at the mage’s command forcing itself down her throat. The rest of us held our breath. Usara continued, moving the girl’s ribs for her, reminding her body how to breathe. A warm glow settled over her, coaxing the chill from her bones.
“Rub her hands, her legs.” The mage nodded abruptly at Sorgrad and me. I hurried to comply but Zenela’s wet fingers felt dead between my palms, cold and unresisting. Sorgrad chafed her feet, face emotionless. Usara looked up sharply to stare at him before fixing his attention on his task.
After half an eternity, Zenela coughed, her eyes rolling in her head.
“Keep her sitting up and wrap her warmly,” Usara told Frue.
Zenela coughed again and suddenly spewed great gouts of fetid water over both of them, racked with spasm after spasm. I moved hurriedly backward.
“Will she be all right?” I caught at Usara’s arm.
“Perhaps.” He looked grim. “Her lungs might fill with water again, it can happen after a drowning—” He shook his head. “Let’s hope she has a strong constitution.”
“What about Castle Pastamar? The Solurans have this aetheric lore in their healing.” Zenela hadn’t exactly endeared herself to me but I wasn’t about to risk Drianon’s disfavor by not doing my part to help her.
“We can’t get anyone to Pastamar unless we can get across this thrice-cursed river,” scowled Usara.
I gazed at the torrent. The sturdy pillars once carrying the last ambition of the Tormalin Empire were ragged stumps of broken masonry. The bridgekeeper’s hut was a roofless ruin of tumbled blocks, the man assuredly dead within it, and the little shrine to Trimon had been completely washed away.
“Will the water rise up again?” I heard a tremor out of my voice that demanded a comforting arm.
“It shouldn’t have risen in the first place!” Usara glared angrily upstream. “I simply don’t understand it. I took soundings from the river, I included the rate of snowmelt, the fact that the ground is so saturated—” He broke off, shaking his head. “It’s all so different out here—you’d be better served by a water mage.”
“You’re the only wizard we’ve got,” I said rather more forcefully than I intended.
“Yes, I suppose I am.” Usara’s narrow shoulders sagged a little. “I should certainly have worked a more effective defense—”
“That’s not what I meant,” I objected.
“Who died and got you elected king?” demanded ’Gren in the same breath, draping my own good cape over my shoulders, ruined, filthy but warm from the fire.
“Those of us with magical talents have a responsibility to use them for the greater good,” said Usara, faint hurt in his voice.
“So you stopped me and Sorgrad drowning like mice in a drain,” I said robustly. Drianon save me, these wizards did take themselves seriously.
“Come and get something warm to drink,” ’Gren urged us both.
Usara shook his head. “I need to see how the water’s affected the ford.” He rolled a weave of ocher light between his hands and stared at the water. “This simply should not have happened.” He stalked off, muttering to himself.
I found the wizard’s uncertainty profoundly disturbing and found a handy target for my irritation in ’Gren. “Where did you get to?”
He gave me a friendly hug. “See that outcrop? Up like a rat on a granary wall, that’s where!”
I looked at our raiders, three dispirited figures trying to pick apart a sodden tangle of harness. Two filthy and sweating ponies were hobbled alongside them.
“The flood washed their baggage clean away,” said ’Gren with spurious innocence.
I narrowed my eyes. “Where to?”
“A handy crevice up yonder,” he admitted.
“Did you get a chance to look inside?” I couldn’t help asking.
’Gren smiled sunnily. “Let’s just say that if they’re honest men, I’m the Elected of Col.”
“So the night’s not a total wash-out,” I joked feebly.
“You need a hot tisane,” said ’Gren critically.
“Of course,” I agreed, “and white bread to go with my roast dinner, and tell the maid not to call me too early in the morning.” I’ve always found it impossible to stay cross at him for long.
I allowed him to lead me back to the fire, where a couple of women were scolding the merchants into broaching their remaining supplies. No one had salvaged any juniper liquor so I had to settle for a cup of newly boiled water bitter with the tang of steeped herbs. It could have done with a spoonful of honey but this was hardly the time to complain about trivialities.
“How are you feeling?” I sat next to Zenela, who was propped up against what remained of Sorgrad’s valises.
“My chest hurts,” she said hoarsely. A massive bruise was purphng across her forehead and a deep graze under her chin would leave her marked for a long while. Her hands were scratched, her nails broken and her long hair was a tangled rat’s nest. Her chin quavered and tears blurred her eyes. In no mood to sit doing nothing but get miserable myself, I pulled a comb from my pocket and began teasing the snarls out of her hair. Frue sang a Forest song, the chorus a meaningless litany, pleasant enough to listen to and soothing. Zenela’s breathing came a little easier as we sat, people all around us seeing what could be salvaged, anxiously checking over their horses and mules, a chill in their spirits as well as their bones.
Frue struck up a new song and one name among the otherwise unknown Forest words caught my ear. “Is that a song about Viyenne?” A ridiculous notion teased me.
He nodded. “Do you know it?”
“I think I heard it, once, long ago.” More importantly, I’d recognized the name in one of the untranslated Forest songs in the book. I itched to get it out but dared not risk the precious thing in the midst of all this muck and damp. “Remind me of the tale.” Perhaps I’d remembered wrong.
Frue smiled. “Viyenne had left her lover, Seris, to travel for a season or so and learn new songs. She traveled for a while with Regere, the weaver of trees. He became besotted with her, was outraged when she decided to return to Seris. Regere had the willows knot themselves into a cage to keep Viyenne with him, but her tears dropped into the river and it rose up to sweep away the barriers and set her free.” Frue looked at the desolation all around us. “It seemed a timely tale.”
So I had remembered right. Uncertainty nagged at me, no longer so ridiculous. Looking over to the riverbank, I saw Usara still prowling, frowning and gesturing with his hands as he argued with himself. Sorgrad and ’Gren had joined a gang trying to get into the demolished hut. I got up and made a tisane, trying to ease the stiffness in my back and legs as I walked over to the wizard. “Drink this,” I ordered.
“I need to—” he protested.
“You need to take some time to gather your strength, or you’ll be no use to anyone,” I told him firmly.